Dear, Honored Hero

Picture at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin is one of the symbols of Victory. Only decades later, the country learned the name Maria Limanskaya. Lenta.Ru visited visiting Maria Filipovna...

Those were fine ladies, they managed to keep the men going in the right direction, they directed, cooked, danced and kept the moral up. There was no hanky panky with "krasnoarmejki" in Red Army it was punishable by DEATH. Thank you Maria Limanskaya!

She goes by the code name "Nut" - a young woman in her twenties with close-cropped, red hair. She wears a standard issue rebel soldier's uniform. She does not want to reveal her identity.

Nut sits in her room in the stark, sparsely furnished barracks in the Petrovsky district, a suburb to the southeast of rebel-held Donetsk. A machine gun is propped up beside her narrow, single bed. Her loyal dog, Loki, growls at visitors.

This quiet, slight woman from Donetsk is in charge of an artillery unit of 50 men in the rebel Oplot battalion. The battalion is led by the "Prime Minister" of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic himself, Alexander Zakharchenko.

The ceasefire means the heavy weapons have been officially withdrawn from the front lines. But before the Minsk agreement came into place, Nut played a key role in the fight for Debaltseve and other major battles against Ukrainian government forces. It is a big change from her former life.

"I was working in a local casino, but it closed down," she says. "Because of this conflict, plenty of people have lost their jobs. We had to look for any kind of job."

'We're taking a risk'

Nut says fighting near her home spurred her decision to join the rebel ranks.

"Personally, I also feel [that] if I stayed at home, I would die from shelling anyway," she says.

Nut rose quickly through the ranks to become a captain. "I had to learn very quickly how to handle heavy weapons," she says. "When I reached a certain level, officers in charge decided to give me a higher rank. I don't know why. Maybe because of my personal qualities, or my knowledge."

She says that being a woman has never proved an obstacle to serving on the front lines. "Guys are not afraid to follow me," she says. "They know that I give correct orders. Not the kind of commands that will create extra risk."

But there are risks. Over 6,000 people have been killed in this conflict so far. It is not clear how many of those were from the Oplot battalion. But the kind of heavy weaponry Nut works with causes a great deal of casualties.

"For sure, we're taking a risk," she says. "Usually, artillery fights against artillery. So if we can reach them, it means that they can reach us. It depends how good the teamwork is, how fast the unit can pull back from the position to avoid losing weapons, ammunition."

And a priority, of course, is not losing anyone, she says.

"We've had to pull back under fire many times."

Coming conflict

The number of other female soldiers serving in the various rebel armies in eastern Ukraine is unknown. In this particular unit, the only other women are a cook and a nurse.

Nut says her role as a female captain is an important one.

"When it's about protecting your homeland, women are on the same level as men. Sometimes women can even be [tougher] than men. So it's really important to have women in this war."

She says the men in her unit are of the opinion that, if she's going, they're not afraid to go, either.

"It boosts their morale. Both men and women can be good or bad commanders. If a person with higher rank is giving orders, we have to obey it, [whether] male or female.'

Most of the men who serve under Nut are away for training when we visit. She says she cannot tell us where they are.

Nor can she show us where the artillery she operates is usually stored. This, she says, is because it has been pulled back from this area to comply with the terms of the Minsk agreement.

But Nut and the soldiers at the barracks are waiting for the next phase of the conflict to resume.

"We're fighting for our land," she says. "If Ukrainian soldiers are forced to fight, we will fight them back."

Liberation of Kiev, "the mother of Russian cities," by General Vatutin's First Ukrainian Front (formerly Voronezh Front at Battle of Kursk).

Message to Stavka by Marshal Zhukov:

"With unbounded joy we report to you that the assignment under orders from you of capturing our fair city of Kiev, the capital of the Uktaine, has been carried out. . . . The city of Kiev has been completely cleared of its Fascist occupiers." (G.K. Zhukhov, "Vospominaniya")

"СПАСИБО ДЕДУ ЗА ПОБЕДУ!"
"Thank you Grandpa, for the Victory!"
How sad they've lived to see putrid fascism rise like a pustual on Ukrainian soil today! But there will be another Great Victory! It will be crushed!

Liberation of Kiev, "the mother of Russian cities," by General Vatutin's First Ukrainian Front (formerly Voronezh Front at Battle of Kursk).

Message to Stavka by Marshal Zhukov:

"With unbounded joy we report to you that the assignment under orders from you of capturing our fair city of Kiev, the capital of the Uktaine, has been carried out. . . . The city of Kiev has been completely cleared of its Fascist occupiers." (G.K. Zhukhov, "Vospominaniya")

Kiev cleared of Fascists the General said,i bet he never thought some Ukrainian Fascist slime was still festering in that City all these years later,the day will come when it needs to be cleared again.

The premiere of the video for the songof Viktor Tsoi"Cuckoo" performed byPolina Gagarina.The famous songin the new arrangementbecamethe main theme for thefilm"Battle forSevastopol." The movie tells the storyof the legendary sniper,hero of the Soviet Union, Lyudmila Pavlichenko, who accounted for 309destroyed Nazis.

See the military film of the yearApril 2in all theatersof the great country!

The premiere of the video for the songof Viktor Tsoi"Cuckoo" performed byPolina Gagarina.The famous songin the new arrangementbecamethe main theme for thefilm"Battle forSevastopol." The movie tells the storyof the legendary sniper,hero of the Soviet Union, Lyudmila Pavlichenko, who accounted for 309destroyed Nazis.

See the military film of the yearApril 2in all theatersof the great country!

This man died in a few seconds after the picture was taken. This photo is called "the commander". It is not staged and is not a scene from a film.

12 July 1942 near the village a good photographer, Max Alpert, managed to take a picture of a man, who raised a company of soldiers to attack, and then shrapnel smashed the camera. The photographer decided that the footage is ruined and did not record the name of the person photographed. Later, showing the film, he saw that it turned out excellent.The identity of the person in the photo after a time determined - his name was Alex Drozdovsky Eremenko.

Here is what he said about those events the witness, Alexander M. Makarov: "the Nazis threw themselves into attack after attack. There were many dead and wounded. Our highly depleted regiment repulsed already the tenth or eleventh attack. The Germans climbed ahead to the Voroshilovgrad (Lugansk), which was about thirty miles. By the end of the day the company commander was wounded.

After a fierce bombardment, backed by tanks and artillery, the Nazis went to another attack. And then, rising to his full height, with the words: "Follow me! For The Motherland! Forward!", Eremenko led the company towards the chains of the Nazis. The political leader was killed, but the attack was repulsed." Despite the fact that Alexey Eremenko was a Junior political officer, the world remembers him as the nameless commander.

This man died in a few seconds after the picture was taken. This photo is called "the commander". It is not staged and is not a scene from a film.

12 July 1942 near the village a good photographer, Max Alpert, managed to take a picture of a man, who raised a company of soldiers to attack, and then shrapnel smashed the camera. The photographer decided that the footage is ruined and did not record the name of the person photographed. Later, showing the film, he saw that it turned out excellent.The identity of the person in the photo after a time determined - his name was Alex Drozdovsky Eremenko.

Here is what he said about those events the witness, Alexander M. Makarov: "the Nazis threw themselves into attack after attack. There were many dead and wounded. Our highly depleted regiment repulsed already the tenth or eleventh attack. The Germans climbed ahead to the Voroshilovgrad (Lugansk), which was about thirty miles. By the end of the day the company commander was wounded.

After a fierce bombardment, backed by tanks and artillery, the Nazis went to another attack. And then, rising to his full height, with the words: "Follow me! For The Motherland! Forward!", Eremenko led the company towards the chains of the Nazis. The political leader was killed, but the attack was repulsed." Despite the fact that Alexey Eremenko was a Junior political officer, the world remembers him as the nameless commander.

Those were the heroes not American Diapers who shot 300 Afghani children and boasted about it

May 9, 2014,St.Petersburg, Russia, an"Immortalregiment" march.My family and I'm will be thereagainthis year.We'llcarrythe portraits of ourfamily members-thosewho died at the fronts in a battles andthosewho survived.